Promoting Learner Autonomy: A Teacher’s Reflections on ESL in India

This book explores the issue of learner autonomy (LA) and its natural progression to teacher autonomy and development. The experiments in teaching and learning, conducted over twenty years and documented here, trace a teacher’s progress as a facilitator through her investigations into pedagogy. Each of the ten papers in this collection examines the implications of encouraging independent learning in the ESL classroom—what kind of teacher support is helpful and when it should be given. What aspects of language use and language learning do we emphasise in the classroom so that the student identifies the sources of learning in the world outside and learns from them? How do we capitalize on the student’s awareness of L1 use to facilitate L2 learning? Does classroom management have any bearing on LA? These papers examine several such LA-related issues and offer guidance on planning lessons, developing material, facilitating interaction, and reflecting on teaching. They should be of interest to the reader also for another reason. The articles illustrate the nature of research that reputed journals encourage. And the choices the writer has with regard to presentation. The book makes quite a few samples available. It inspires and supports teachers, teacher-educators, and researchers to study context-specific practices, and publish their own accounts of promoting learner autonomy.